Purging: A Love Story.

My borderline unhealthy obsession with purging is no secret. Purgeday Thursday has covered everything from physical clutter to digital clutter to mental clutter to metabolic clutter, and I’ve learned a lot about you guys and how you like to get rid of (or not) your stuff (mental, physical, digital, and otherwise) in the process. And I’ve picked up a trick or two along the way. (I mean, beyond what we’ve learned fromthe encyclopedia of knowledge that is Super Beth.)

I’d heard of people declaring email bankruptsy to achieve that elusive Inbox Zero, but I never thought I’d actually do it.

And yet, seemingly unrelated, with my website popping on google searches about purging and cleansing and non-hording left and right, sometimes purging opportunities come to me. As was the case with the much talked about Blueprint Cleanse upon it’s arrival in LA (Whole Foods, Baby!). Five Days (six for me due to some technical difficulties) ALL JUICE ALL THE TIME. OMFG. Once I tried to do the master cleanse and I was ordering in dinner by hour 12. But the Blueprint Cleanse is different. It offers actual sustenance in the form on fresh pressed vegetable juice and cashew milk, and yes, cayenne pepper spiced lemonade with syrup, so once I got through the sugar withdrawals on the first day I felt full and awesome. Although the urge to chew never goes away. That’s kind of a human thing I think. I felt so good at the end of day one I actually decided to extend my cleanse to go for the full immune system benefits of letting my digestive tract take a nap.

And then, feeling really nice and purge-y, I marked some 1400 odd unchecked emails as read.

I know. If you’re quiet, you can almost hear Emily Post turning over in her grave.

Look, it’s not that I’m so popular I get so many emails from people wanting to be my email friends that I can’t possibly handle it all. It’s more that SPAMMERS HAVE NO SHAME, and people will sell your published emails to totally unsuspecting marketers and then before you know it you are getting so many emails a day it has become LITERALLY THE LEAST EFFECTIVE WAY TO REACH YOU EVEN WORSE THAN SNAIL MAIL.

The moment I did it, I was elated. Like: INBOX ZERO; I HAZ IT. And then, being the type of person who panics, I became gripped with the realization that there were probably TON of actual personal/work/necessary emails in there that I had just marked-unread into oblivion. And I started frantically trying to remember who was supposed to be emailing me about what, and scribbling down names, and returning emails at random that I had read on my iPhone, and generally freaking the fuck out.

Today, in the aftermath – after purging and rule-making, and smart-mailbox-creating, I’ve magically been able to handle my daily email load. It’s glorious. But I’ve also woken up with the sweats over something I totally blew as a result of the greatest digital purge I’ve ever purged. Here’s hoping that taking the plunge once was enough and I can keep my head above email water from here on in. I’ll keep you posted.

And if you are waiting for me to respond to an email of yours, kindly consider forgiving my asshole-ness and resending it.

Anyway. Back to my physical cleansing. I went for the all-green-all-the-time plan because I wanted to go DEEP on this cleanse, but I might recommend breaking it up with their fruit juices because MAN that was a lot of green juice! Wanna try it? Blueprint Cleanse is offering readers and lurkers of The818 15% off their amazing fresh-pressed juices for the next three days if you enter the code BP818 at check out. (My advice, order your juice delivery as close to when you’ll drink and in as small of quantities as possible because it is SIGNIFICANTLY MORE DELICIOUS on days one and two after pressing. By day six, BPC recommends you flush it.) (Oh! More advice…I froze my lemonade and my cashew milk into popsicles a few times to give me something to chew on and that worked WONDERS!)

You guys. I haven’t eaten food since last Tuesday. You have no idea how excited I am for dinner tonight.

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10 comments for “Purging: A Love Story.”

I LOVE green juice — especially Pressed Juicery products — but not sure if I’d want to live exclusively on the stuff for days on end. I’d be afraid of hallucinations, or not trusting myself to take care of the kids alone! But like everything else, moderation is key, right?

You made me read that whole thing. I did not want to read it. I wanted to skim it and leave some kind of cursory bullshit comment, but I am too a secret purger – not the bodily kind as I simply cannot waste food that way – but the get rid of things and tidy up my email kind of purger. Just reading your post made me feel somehow lighter. Just thinking of your jettisoned 1400 emails gave me a contact high. Thank you. But I’m not drinking any fucking juice. I just ate four Laffy Taffies. That’s how I roll.

I did the same thing a few months back. Not the juice cleanse thing, but the email inbox purge. & like you, I went a little overboard & accidentally deleted some important emails, turns out. Now I’m back to my 659+ emails in the ol’ inbox, but it’s nothing compared to my 20K+ days (that was out of control).

I’d rather not eat than just live on juice for more than a day, but I do like fresh pressed juice, thanks for the recommend girl.

I so need to purge the crap in my life, especially the physical and the email. Physical as in too much stuff to put in too little a space with too little storage type containers. And I’d tell you how bad my email needs purging except it might give you a heart attack … and I really like your blog, so I’d like to keep reading it. So anyway, I’m going to follow your blog and hope I can learn something by osmosis…cause there’s just no room for anything else. :p

I love juicing. Obsessed with it, but BPC was definitely the most difficult one for me to get through. Did you like BPC enough to do it again? If you liked the results, but want a nicer tasting green juice and flavor selection, try PALETA. It’s delicious! So far, my fave.